In life, a moral compass would come in handy.

Rating: 5/10 (18 December 2005)

It just isn't true that movie failures move swiftly to video. Quite the opposite. The Island was perhaps the biggest and quickest flop of 2005, and along with the excellent Cinderella Man, they moved slowly to video. The Island was made to look like a rip-off of ABC'S hit series LOST, but in fact is nothing like it. Indeed there is no island in the film until the final few seconds. The film presents a Liberal Democrat's Dream World, in which human cloning is taken to the degree that hundreds of clone-humans are made in a secret laboratory, to be carved up when Limousine Liberals with much money and no conscience needs a liver or a kidney. When a clone disappears, they say he's won the lottery and gets to go to an island paradise with unlimited sex et cetera. A total absence of God and morality permeates the story, except when a few "defective" clones start getting real human traits like curiosity and conscience. A mildly entertaining chase involving the customary special effects excess is somewhat offset by watching Scarlet Johansen. Speaking of conscience or lack thereof, the movie was made by Michael Bey. He's the guy who trashed the military heroes of World War II with his awful and unpatriotic "Pearl Harbor" -- in which the Japanese attack on America was "justified" in the film's opening minutes; this rewrite of history to (according to the studio) improve box office in Japan.